The Menagerie

House, dog and cat sitting duties came to an end with Geoff and Pam’s return yesterday, despite the technological trauma of automatically locking car doors during the airport run. Today, the rightful owners are firmly back in the driving seat. Well, that is, Geoff was firmly back in the driving seat once he had remembered that, unlike Australia, the driving seat is on the left of the car in Spain. 🙂

Since the entire menagerie survived our ministrations and are now successfully in the care of those who know them best, it seems appropriate finally to introduce them. First, the ladies …

The two golden retrievers are Sherry (left) and Chandon (right). Apparently, The original idea was to name them Moet and Chandon but Geoff refused to stand in the street shouting, “Moet!”. [Wise man, Geoff.] Both are 12 years old and getting on a bit for retrievers. Sherry remains quite sprightly but Chandon suffers noticeably from an arthritic rear end. They both like lots of attention and are prepared to eat almost anything, apparently without pausing to taste it. It seems that they do manage to taste things though since they were unanimous in their joint rejection of a raw spinach leaf which they both spat out after two or three sucks. Not the same spinach leaf, I hasten to add – I wouldn’t do that to them. 🙂 Chandon seemed particularly keen to relieve me of half a raw lemon one day as I was cooking but I decided it might upset her stomach.

And now, the lads …

The cats, being more independent, were less work – until, that is, Jake (left – the black and white one sporting a ruff and kasbah trousers) decides to wake us up at 3:20 in the morning to be let out. Having seen to Jake and returned to bed, Bailey (the black half Persian below) then meows to be let out at 3:45 in the morning. I say “morning” but, let’s face it, by most people’s reckoning, anytime between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM constitutes the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Chester (right – the ginger one), calmly sleeps through it all. The only time Chester doesn’t appear completely calm is when he is attempting to make passionate advances to a furry cushion. Chester and Jake are about 13 years old and Bailey is about 10.

Bailey likes to ask for people-food but rarely actually eats it. Bailey does not like cameras, at least he didn’t after my flash gun fired while photographing Jake. Subsequently, as soon as I appeared armed with my camera, Bailey took off like a scalded cat, as it were. Hence the reason I do not have a portrait-style picture of Bailey. In this picture, he is completely ignoring a table full of octopus and prawns people-food, true to form.

Finally, I can’t resist a second picture of Jake in one of his regular poses drinking water from the kitchen tap. If only he could learn how to turn the tap on and off.